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General Brand New and Trying to Make Up my mind

Reuben said:
Thanks Jessie!!
No, it totally did not scare me away and is SUPER helpful and I love your honesty!!! I feel like your situation is very much like our own and a lot of similarities on both sides. Like you, my wife suffered abuse an abandonment issues from her childhood. Her uncle sexually abused her and her mother left her as a little girl as the oldest of 7 children and she was the only girl. Her all-male younger siblings essentially became her "children" to care for so she had to "grow up" quick at a very young age and form a very unhealthy relationship with her father that made it very difficult for her to break-away and commit to me in our marriage. It was almost like her father was viewed by her as her "previous spouse," but not in a "sexual" way. Because the two of them were essentially raising all the boys together, she was not only forced into a "motherly" role, but a "parental" role with her father. When we married, I didn't realize at the time how much all of this would affect our marriage. Any time a problem between the two of us came up, it was off to her daddy to complain, and then it was me against the two of them. Eventually, I just had to tell her that she needed to decide--me or daddy? Additionally, the lack of a female "mother" figure growing up and an inexperience to "be a child" (experience childhood) led to additional problems where she acted out for a time in our marriage and just "went wild." She just went off the deep end and she ended up having an affair. I was so devastated and hurt (not to mention--lost all my trust in her) that it has been years of us trying to restore what was broken. Although it would have been easy to walk away, we have continued to work on fixing our marriage and keeping our family of 7 great children together (we're both in our early 40's). Our goal had been not only to restore what we once had, but make it BETTER. I must admit that she has worked really hard on herself and her walk with God. She also works really hard to sustain and keep our marriage getting better. Part of my concern in relaying my desire for a second wife to her is: I don't want her to think that I'm only looking for a second wife because I no longer trust or am interested in her. That's not really it. A huge part of my motivation has actually been because I think it could potentially be helpful for both of us for a few reasons (although that's why this site and dialog have been helpful because I'm trying to get feedback to examine my motives and make sure they're not sinful): 1. A helper for my wife and "sister" that she never had growing up. My wife is always talking about how she wishes she had more female friends or a sister. I've always wanted someone like that for her. Someone who not only spends time with her each day and she can talk to, but they can share clothes, do each other's hair, help with the children, etc. 2. I really want more children, but my wife is just physically not able to anymore (peri-menopause). She'd like more young children too, but she is afraid that she would not be able to have another healthy baby with all that she has going on with her health and overall energy levels after having had 7 children already and working full-time with me in our family-run business. Another wife who wants to add to our growing family would be awesome. 3. Sexual activity of men versus women. I don't want to stereotype, but I know that I (as a man) would prefer sexual activity A LOT more often than my wife would. This puts strain on both of us because my wife often doesn't feel physically up to it (especially with all her physical health issues going on--she also has symptoms from her lyme disease) and I feel bad pressuring her in any way. If I leave it up to her and when she "feels like it" (which is what I do right now), we may have sex less than 1-2Xs a month. For her, that's plenty. For me, I would prefer at least that much EACH WEEK! The issue is that I find a lack of physical intimacy somehow makes me not only more tense and uptight with her, but resentful. But a large part of my resent would often come from the fact that I always thought my desire for more or with someone else was "sinful"--because I was always brought up that marriage (and subsequently sexual activity) was only supposed to be between one man and one woman. The idea that a man's sexual activity/desire is not really meant to match a woman's was something I've always known from a "biological" and "experiential" perspective, but I had always wrestled with this desire as me somehow being sinful. I had never really thought that maybe a big part of why a man's desire is different from a woman's is because God made them that way and that plural marriage is okay with God. Additionally, as part of the jealously thing you mentioned, I totally understand that because like I said, I'd be jealous if my wife said she wanted a second husband. In fact, I'd be downright angry and refuse. I'd more than likely want to divorce her! So, the idea that she'd feel jealousy too, is completely natural (especially given our cultural upbringing and past experiences). When I think about jealousy, however, I'm reminded of the difference in scripture concerning God's "righteous" jealousy versus sinful jealousy. How one is directed toward something we SHOULD covet--relationship with God versus toward something we SHOULDN'T. Additionally (though not exactly the same) I think about how is it possible for God to love us ALL equally--or does He love some moreso than others? I don't think that's how God loves. With my own children, I love them ALL unconditionally, but each child I love in a unique way:)
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I'm new to the site- but this thread is so interesting- so I'm daring to comment!. I'm a young woman engaged to be a second wife- but with my own flat- so the 'merger' is happening at a gentle speed. My fiancé has been looking for a second partner for a long time- and has had a number of girlfriends that have not been quite right until he found me- so it could be that your journey will involve a few false starts- which will give you moments of bliss as well as a deeper perspective to be a better head of household. Any awkwardness will not only be with the first wife's insecurity, it will also be with any new girlfriends, who may feel that they are invading someone's space. My potential sister wife, Emma, seems a bit hesitant with me sometimes, but other times, she can be optimistic, fun to be with and very supportive- and we've even done things like shopping together without our 'H'. I expect your journey will have some difficult days but some amazing ones as well. Hope this helps
 
Meritxell Vinyet said:
I'm new to the site- but this thread is so interesting- so I'm daring to comment!. I'm a young woman engaged to be a second wife- but with my own flat- so the 'merger' is happening at a gentle speed. My fiancé has been looking for a second partner for a long time- and has had a number of girlfriends that have not been quite right until he found me- so it could be that your journey will involve a few false starts- which will give you moments of bliss as well as a deeper perspective to be a better head of household. Any awkwardness will not only be with the first wife's insecurity, it will also be with any new girlfriends, who may feel that they are invading someone's space. My potential sister wife, Emma, seems a bit hesitant with me sometimes, but other times, she can be optimistic, fun to be with and very supportive- and we've even done things like shopping together without our 'H'. I expect your journey will have some difficult days but some amazing ones as well. Hope this helps
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What do you make of the fact that Followers of Christ can embrace polygamy?
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
What do you make of the fact that Followers of Christ can embrace polygamy?
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I'm too new to speak on anything too deep, but Christ's efforts were about changing people to make the best possible world out of the one that was already there. He could easily have had a harsh word against a SW who didn't consider a FW's feelings, and I could see him having a strong word to say to the man who didn't consider the emotions of the girls who had confided in him. My conclusions about polygamy are based on personal experience of how people are- my internalising of Christ is at a very early stage..sorry
 
Thanks so much for the feedback!! Again, it's so great to get a female perspective too. I know not all females will feel the same, but it's still good to hear/see both sides. I've only recently tried bringing PM up in passing conversation with my wife like, "oh, did you see that show sister wives--what did you think of that?" or "Did you notice that they have quite a few shows on polygamy on TV now--I wonder why that is? Why do you think that is?" So far, her opinion has not been positive. She definitely thinks of it as "sin" and it's going to be tough for me to bring it up with her. I'll have to just keep at it slowly. What's tough for me is that I really don't want to wait forever though either--especially at having more children. But I guess I have to tread cautiously because when we were first married she was under the impression it would only ever be the two of us. She definitely thinks of any other relationship with another woman as an affair. That's one thing that's difficult too--thinking about how to meet someone open to PM and how to date/court them while not yet being married to them. As far as wife would be concerned, even being interested in another person would be like cheating. It's gonna be a hard road. It's so new to me that I'm not exactly sure how to proceed the right way.


Meritxell Vinyet said:
I'm new to the site- but this thread is so interesting- so I'm daring to comment!. I'm a young woman engaged to be a second wife- but with my own flat- so the 'merger' is happening at a gentle speed. My fiancé has been looking for a second partner for a long time- and has had a number of girlfriends that have not been quite right until he found me- so it could be that your journey will involve a few false starts- which will give you moments of bliss as well as a deeper perspective to be a better head of household. Any awkwardness will not only be with the first wife's insecurity, it will also be with any new girlfriends, who may feel that they are invading someone's space. My potential sister wife, Emma, seems a bit hesitant with me sometimes, but other times, she can be optimistic, fun to be with and very supportive- and we've even done things like shopping together without our 'H'. I expect your journey will have some difficult days but some amazing ones as well. Hope this helps
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Personally, I would recommend being straight with your wife sooner rather than later, because laying out hints will eventually, in retrospect, come across as manipulative dishonesty. Look inside yourself to assess your own motivations for delaying being straightforward, and it's possible you will discover that you may be doing this out of a desire to avoid conflict. Well, if conflict is going to occur with your wife around the topic of plural marriage, you may as well dive into that as soon as possible, in order to begin the time clock of whatever it is she's going to have to go through in order to process the new information along the way toward acceptance and ideally embracing the possibility within her own life. If you don't think you're ready for that, or even if you don't think your wife is ready for that, it still comes back to the fact that, as the man in the matter, you are the one who is 100% responsible for everything that goes on in your family -- so if she's not ready, the place to look is where it is the case that you're not ready to move forward, and that's likely to be related, as other men have mentioned here before, to the degree to which you have established yourself as the patriarch (not the lord and master, but the true leader) of your household and your marriage. I say all this with great humility, because my own search for a second wife is predominantly on hold and has been for over a year now, because I realized that I wasn't sufficiently the head of my household and had other, much more crucial, irons I needed to get into the fire before my household would be ready for expansion.

The joyful thing is that tackling becoming a true patriarch head-on has produced so many blessings in my marriage and family that, should I never have a plural family, just becoming the true leader of my household will have made getting involved in all this way beyond worth it.

At some point, @Reuben, you're going to have to cross the bridge of addressing the fact that your marriage began with a promise to your wife that she would be the only one. If she's like almost all women, she's got something akin to a death grip on that promise. No amount of applying philosophical W-D40 is going to make a dent in the corrosion that has encrusted that death grip. In fact, I tend to disagree with almost every reason people give for why Christianity in general is so vehemently opposed to plural marriage. In my perception, it not only has nothing to do with Scripture or religious beliefs or fear of eternal damnation, nor is even the whole fairy-tale princess fantasy the driving force behind the resistance or even feminism. The fundamental momentum behind unwillingness to consider the possibility that polygyny should not be considered acceptable is plain and simply the nearly universal human desire to be popular and/or receive active approval from one's community. Our culture has not considered polygamy acceptable for so many generations that myths like the definition of marriage always having been a union between one man and one woman can be voiced without even a hint of irony. People want to be Liked, and people want to avoid being scorned, and being on the side of polygamy is just too much of a no-no. When you add that to your wife living in the land of assuming that she long-ago already won her personal husband sweepstakes, this subject is not going to be one you can just gradually soft-soap her out of like you might have been able to about getting that new grill or buying tickets to whatever concert you wanted to attend.

Please don't hear me in any way as saying that you should give up. Please don't give up. The process is doable. My wife nearly left me over all this, but now she's even kind of looking forward to the benefits of having another woman around the house and in her husband's bed. But what so many of us have learned is that this is a process that demands manhood. It simply will not work to take this the way Dr. Phil might advise one to approach it.
 
Akin to Kieth's post, the biggest issue is to establish your rightful headship of your existing family and be able to maintain it! If you have your proper role as head of your house established, then the issue of a second wife becomes a moot point. If you cannot keep the spiritual high ground and be the leader She will try to assert her direction under the banner of equality or worse claiming her revelation and understanding of spiritual things to be greater than yours. If your example gives her too much room to doubt your spiritual insight and integrity, she will consider finding others to look to for guidance. If there are other spiritual influences in your families life their voice must support yours or you must be prepared to overcome not only her objections but also theirs. to quote, I believe it was Andrew, "If you want another wife, be a better husband." you have to convince her that you are such a good husband that she becomes willing to share you rather than leave you.
Good Luck! It can be done! I have two wives!
 
Reuben said:
Thanks so much for the feedback!! Again, it's so great to get a female perspective too. I know not all females will feel the same, but it's still good to hear/see both sides. I've only recently tried bringing PM up in passing conversation with my wife like, "oh, did you see that show sister wives--what did you think of that?" or "Did you notice that they have quite a few shows on polygamy on TV now--I wonder why that is? Why do you think that is?" So far, her opinion has not been positive. She definitely thinks of it as "sin" and it's going to be tough for me to bring it up with her. I'll have to just keep at it slowly. What's tough for me is that I really don't want to wait forever though either--especially at having more children. But I guess I have to tread cautiously because when we were first married she was under the impression it would only ever be the two of us. She definitely thinks of any other relationship with another woman as an affair. That's one thing that's difficult too--thinking about how to meet someone open to PM and how to date/court them while not yet being married to them. As far as wife would be concerned, even being interested in another person would be like cheating. It's gonna be a hard road. It's so new to me that I'm not exactly sure how to proceed the right way.
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Hi Ruben. Thanks for quoting me- I'm not great about wisdom- but would like to reply. You are in the 21st century, and an approach to plural marriage has to be relevant to this age, and to what you and any ladies want out of life. In our case (MFF), the women are getting the independence they need to pursue their own career goals- I'm a translator and Emma is a corporate lawyer- I was a single parent before this began- and proud of being so. My 'husband' Al has a lot of travelling, which gave him the opportunity to date younger girls which he was attracted to, and this practice made it easier for him to approach the issues involved- which included developing his first marriage as well as fun and enriching courtship and growing intimacy with potential second partners. I know responsible men have these internal conflicts, and a lot resolve these by being dishonest and having affairs- you sound like you are on a more noble, more honest route to get the best out of life. In your journey, you need to make sure that your first wife keeps developing and finds her own goals, interests and sense of purpose within a marriage that is developing on a path that neither of you expected.
 
Keith Martin said:
Personally, I would recommend being straight with your wife sooner rather than later, because laying out hints will eventually, in retrospect, come across as manipulative dishonesty. Look inside yourself to assess your own motivations for delaying being straightforward, and it's possible you will discover that you may be doing this out of a desire to avoid conflict. Well, if conflict is going to occur with your wife around the topic of plural marriage, you may as well dive into that as soon as possible, in order to begin the time clock of whatever it is she's going to have to go through in order to process the new information along the way toward acceptance and ideally embracing the possibility within her own life. If you don't think you're ready for that, or even if you don't think your wife is ready for that, it still comes back to the fact that, as the man in the matter, you are the one who is 100% responsible for everything that goes on in your family -- so if she's not ready, the place to look is where it is the case that you're not ready to move forward, and that's likely to be related, as other men have mentioned here before, to the degree to which you have established yourself as the patriarch (not the lord and master, but the true leader) of your household and your marriage. I say all this with great humility, because my own search for a second wife is predominantly on hold and has been for over a year now, because I realized that I wasn't sufficiently the head of my household and had other, much more crucial, irons I needed to get into the fire before my household would be ready for expansion.

The joyful thing is that tackling becoming a true patriarch head-on has produced so many blessings in my marriage and family that, should I never have a plural family, just becoming the true leader of my household will have made getting involved in all this way beyond worth it.

At some point, @Reuben, you're going to have to cross the bridge of addressing the fact that your marriage began with a promise to your wife that she would be the only one. If she's like almost all women, she's got something akin to a death grip on that promise. No amount of applying philosophical W-D40 is going to make a dent in the corrosion that has encrusted that death grip. In fact, I tend to disagree with almost every reason people give for why Christianity in general is so vehemently opposed to plural marriage. In my perception, it not only has nothing to do with Scripture or religious beliefs or fear of eternal damnation, nor is even the whole fairy-tale princess fantasy the driving force behind the resistance or even feminism. The fundamental momentum behind unwillingness to consider the possibility that polygyny should not be considered acceptable is plain and simply the nearly universal human desire to be popular and/or receive active approval from one's community. Our culture has not considered polygamy acceptable for so many generations that myths like the definition of marriage always having been a union between one man and one woman can be voiced without even a hint of irony. People want to be Liked, and people want to avoid being scorned, and being on the side of polygamy is just too much of a no-no. When you add that to your wife living in the land of assuming that she long-ago already won her personal husband sweepstakes, this subject is not going to be one you can just gradually soft-soap her out of like you might have been able to about getting that new grill or buying tickets to whatever concert you wanted to attend.

Please don't hear me in any way as saying that you should give up. Please don't give up. The process is doable. My wife nearly left me over all this, but now she's even kind of looking forward to the benefits of having another woman around the house and in her husband's bed. But what so many of us have learned is that this is a process that demands manhood. It simply will not work to take this the way Dr. Phil might advise one to approach it.
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@Reuben was just following a suggestion some of us put forward, but it's not as easy to get her to think about those shows, if they are on a channel that she doesn't usually watch. Personally, I don't think I could have ever gotten my wife on board without the help of @cnystrom and his wife @Ruthie. It was harder to get her to accept their friendship, knowing that I and they were pro-poly, than it probably would have been, if we had been able to secure their friendship BEFORE I even brought up polygamy, but with some prayer and fasting, God brought her to that point where she was willing to get to know them. It helped that they lived so close to us.

I'm all for honesty in this sort of thing, but the reality is, this could blow up right away, or it could simmer, but it will take some time. She has probably already brought up the fact that Reuben asked her about those shows, with her closest friends, who are likely to hold feelings against polygamy, simply because he asked her about it. I guess the real question is, how committed his wife is to remaining married for life. Without some idea of that, I fear he could be headed for divorce court. There is no fast track that I am aware of, for getting her to accept this. First and foremost, he must know that she will walk with him to hell and back, and then to hell and back again. Red Pill Movement, will greatly assist here, but he is going to have to commit to it. Reuben should work on being able to dominate his wife, and forget about saying anything regarding polygamy, for the time being. He should figure out which channel those shows are on, and if he has cable, he should watch that channel (TLC I think) occasionally, and don't mention anything about the show, or even tune into that channel at the time those shows are on. She will see advertisements for the show during those times that he occasionally watches that channel, when other shows are on. If she gets curious, she will watch the polygamy shows on her own. That is the extent to which he should have anything to say about polygamy for now, because we have to make sure that this marriage is on solid footing. When he can get her to go over to some pro-poly friends house, without her challenging him on it, simply because he says, "Let's go", only then can he make riskier moves. I would suggest though, that if he can pay a visit to Way Biblical Church and find the pastor there that is pro-poly, that would be the ideal place to start.

Also, I don't really recommend trying to find your second wife until the first one comes on board. If God drops a second in your lap, you don't have to shut her down, but mentally, it will be even more difficult to keep your composure, trying to woo a second wife that you cannot have, and there is no guarantee she will still be there, when your wife does get on board, if that does in fact happen.
 
Keith Martin said:
At some point, @Reuben, you're going to have to cross the bridge of addressing the fact that your marriage began with a promise to your wife that she would be the only one. If she's like almost all women, she's got something akin to a death grip on that promise. No amount of applying philosophical W-D40 is going to make a dent in the corrosion that has encrusted that death grip.
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This is true @Rueben. But I also think that if a husband successfully leads his wife into a Biblical mindset, that objection will evaporate. But getting her their is harder than you think. And you may not fully grasp it yet yourself.
 
Jim an Apostle said:
Akin to Kieth's post, the biggest issue is to establish your rightful headship of your existing family and be able to maintain it! If you have your proper role as head of your house established, then the issue of a second wife becomes a moot point. If you cannot keep the spiritual high ground and be the leader She will try to assert her direction under the banner of equality or worse claiming her revelation and understanding of spiritual things to be greater than yours. If your example gives her too much room to doubt your spiritual insight and integrity, she will consider finding others to look to for guidance. If there are other spiritual influences in your families life their voice must support yours or you must be prepared to overcome not only her objections but also theirs. to quote, I believe it was Andrew, "If you want another wife, be a better husband." you have to convince her that you are such a good husband that she becomes willing to share you rather than leave you.
Good Luck! It can be done! I have two wives!
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I love this contribution! I questioned my husband about any tensions with his first wife and how they were handled. He said that there were tensions; the cold silence of a first wife once or twice after evenings out, and an embarrasing raised voice at a public function. I believe it when he says that was never any time when he used any 'patriarchal' wisdom in a nasty way to calm his wife. He said that there was some bad timing in the reengineering of the family, which he takes responsibility for. He wanted to get Emma (FW) to get involved a specialist law course, so she was growing as a person at the same time he was getting his head round the idea that polygamy could be in his future. He puts these little difficulties with Emma down to not seeing her internalise her new interests as fast as he wanted to explore expanding the family. I know from my experience that he handles a raised voice or a 'hot mood' of a women with a lot of care- so I can guess that his dealing with Emma would have been as gentle and romantic as his courtship of me and other girls that have entered his life. The idea of "being the man" does not mean trying to dominate, but could well mean having the vision to steer things where they are satisfying for you and your kinfolk. You need to make sure that the path you are on leads to opportunities for a little bit of space for your first wife to find her own place- and she will need your support on the way.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
Personally, I don't think I could have ever gotten my wife on board without the help of @cnystrom and his wife @Ruthie.
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That is very kind of you to say. To be clear we never tried to convince your wife of polygamy, only to be a friend to her and to understand what she was going through, but we were always happy to share what we believed and were happy to let God's grace and his Spirit do the rest, leadering her the way that he wanted her to go, wherever that led.

And we were very happy to come out of it all with some cool new local friends who are a blessing to us and we hope will continue to be in the years ahead.
 
Reuben said:
She definitely thinks of it as "sin" and it's going to be tough for me to bring it up with her.
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Actually, her thinking of it as "sin" may be a method to bring it up to her. Ask her why she thinks so? Ask her what verses support her conclusion. Ask her about other verses that seem to clearly indicate it is not a sin.

You can also ask her what she thinks about Christian missionaries breaking up polygamous families in Africa and women and children being cast out? Who is at fault in that situation?

If she has trouble with you leading her spiritually then that is something you could work on. Spending more time with her in prayer and Bible study in general so she will get used to following instead of leading.

Just some ideas brother.
 
Keith Martin said:
At some point, @Reuben, you're going to have to cross the bridge of addressing the fact that your marriage began with a promise to your wife that she would be the only one.
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Not all vows have this. I was at a recent wedding and listened carefully at the vows and it did not include the monogamy clause. Also with many couples writing their own vows instead using traditional ones this may be less common, even if only because it is assumed.

Not to contradict your excellent general point about being up front with your wife.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
This is very true. As men, we have a firm grasp on logic, but for women, emotions often trump logic. In fact, your wife will presume your motive is to have more sex, and she will assume that there is something wrong with that. The purpose of getting to the point where you can present sound arguments for your position, is not so much to persuade your wife to get on board. For that, you will need solid Biblical Families friends to build a relationship with her. The reason you want to be able to present your arguments cleanly and concisely, is to give your marriage a chance for that to take place, because if your wife thinks that you are in error Biblically, if she thinks that you have embraced some sort of strange cult, she will be more inclined to end the marriage, and nobody wants to see that happen.
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I haven't written for some time- but I remembered this discussion and I wanted to add to it. We have a friend who is aware of our polygamy arrangement, and is investigating whether an arrangement could enrich his life. Some two months ago, he talked to his wife about it, and unfortunately her reaction was negative to the idea, to him having a girlfriend and she contemplated leaving the marriage. After some weeks, she asked to talk to her husband, apologised for her original anger and asked if she could stay, even though he had started dating a nice, easy-going, pretty girl quite openly. This is not to say that all parties understand too much about the philosophy of polygamy or indeed scripture- but it shows that girls can be made of stronger stuff than is sometimes imagined. I know there were tears when his wife took a side bedroom, so that the master bedroom could be the "master's" space- but this is a story where resolving issues does seem possible. The wife confided that she was surprised that her female friends tended to take a neutral point of view, or even openly supported her husband on the issue- and that was a big issue in bringing her to the decision to try to make things work.
 
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